632 MODERN ARCHITECTURE 



person of Andre Michel. While taking a most scrupulous account of 

 the texts, their teaching rests much more on the aesthetic point of 

 view than did that of Quicherat and his successors, and it certainly 

 does not seem to be less fruitful in results than that of 1'Ecole des 

 Chartes. Courajod indeed erred, from time to time, by reason of his 

 too vivid imagination. His theory, basing the origin of the Gothic 

 style upon the necessities of construction in wood, which has been 

 contradicted by the actual facts, has been abandoned. One of 

 his pupils, M. Albert Marignan, has shown himself to be a distin- 

 guished architect of unquestioned originality. Through his undertak- 

 ing to prove that they were of much more recent date than had 

 been believed, he has to his credit the bringing about of a general 

 reconsideration of the dates of the most celebrated monuments. The 

 buildings lend themselves only in a small degree to Marignan's 

 attempt; for instance, his opinions with regard to the great doorway 

 of Chartres and the tapestries of Bayeux have provoked most inter- 

 esting replies from M. de Lasteyrie as to Chartres and M. Lanore as 

 to Bayeux. 



An authority who is a teacher only by his writings, M. Anthyme 

 Saint-Paul, has a wide and most salutary influence in pointing out the 

 historical errors of Viollet-le-Duc and in editing with modern scholar- 

 ship and critical insight the archaeological sections of the Guides 

 Joanne. He has brought an immense mass of accurate information 

 within the reach of the public, and has corrected a number of errone- 

 ous theories. 



Another independent authority, the ingenious M. Auguste 

 Choisy, has published monographs that are masterly in their technical 

 analysis of Roman and Byzantine architecture, exhibiting a penetra- 

 tion and a power of synthesis that are beyond all praise. Here and 

 there only, in points of detail, is there a lack of information or an 

 erroneous historical deduction. 



One must also say a word with reference to the interesting labors of 

 the Count de Dion upon two branches of medieval architecture that 

 have been too much neglected, the chateaux and the monasteries, 

 and also the valuable research of the lamented Palustre upon the 

 French Renaissance. One cannot say too much in praise of the work 

 of M. Emile Male upon the Religious Art of the Thirteenth Century, 

 too comprehensive a title, by the way, of which t\vo editions 

 liavf appeared within the last three years. The author lias traced 

 with astonishing success the literary sources from which have come 

 the paintings arid sculptures that decorate our churches. 



In addition to the publication by provincial societies of architect- 

 ural statistics, along various lines and of most unequal merit, and 

 in general distinctly inferior to those published in Germany, - 

 researches have been made into the different schools of art of the 



